11/29/2009 10:00:00 AM
This is the end (of tyranny)
Legal-Ease
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| By Todd D. Wolfrum
Attorney-at-law |
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"Each State shall have the exclusive right to legislate concerning abortion, drug enforcement, education, religion, and any other area not expressly granted to the jurisdiction of Congress and no right shall ever be implied where not expressly stated in the Constitution." - as of yet unproposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
And why not? States have this power to vote themselves more power. As conservatives coalesce into the nebulous Tea Party Movement, shouldn't this amendment be the ultimate goal?
Despite the exponential growth of the federal government's role in our lives ever since, 1933 saw the last substantive change to the Constitution - the 21st Amendment's repeal of Prohibition. Judicial activism has made constitutional amendments unnecessary, but think: federal judges can't interpret those laws that Congress is constitutionally barred from making.
Two-thirds of the states are needed to propose a constitutional amendment and three-fourths are needed to ratify. This means that the banding together of thirty-eight states could immediately end the growth of the federal government and the tyranny of judicial lawmaking.
Far-fetched? Not if conservatives learn to utilize a latent power source. Consider the 2008 election: California held more electoral votes than Alaska, Arizona, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma (all going for McCain) combined, 55 to 52. However, in the one state/one vote scenario of constitutional amendment, the liberal edge in these states switches to a 12 to 1 conservative landslide.
Now think locally: Consider a hypothetical school, hypothetically called Lincolnview. That school has had a Bible class for elementary students for decades - basically since it became a school. Suddenly, one disgruntled soul decides to end that tradition, not by seeking popular redress to the school board or the community, but through the ACLU.
(My kids hypothetically go to this school and although I have no strong feelings either way about Bible class there, I am deeply offended that one person can impose his or her will on an entire hypothetical community. Hypothetically, that is.)
Such tyranny is not possible with the above amendment - the community actually is able to decide what it wants. In a free society, if you don't like a school, you can move to one of your choosing, petition the board to change its curriculum, or have your kid get used to standing against the tide - trust me, that skill is going to be essential in a life where such stances are taken.
The Constitution, by the way, literally says nothing about religion in schools. The First Amendment says simply that Congress shall not establish a religion. At Lincolnview, it hasn't. In fact, the First Amendment was meant to protect state institutions (i.e. schools) from the federal government and proposed to help convince North Carolina and Rhode Island to join the Union. (George Washington took office presiding over eleven states, not thirteen.)
This all flipped from state protection into state coercion through the 14th Amendment. Intended to protect newly freed slaves, that amendment imposed the guarantees found in the Bill of Rights on the conquered Confederacy and all other states in the process. After years of judicial wisdom, tradition is virtually illegal. The goal is diversity, so long as it is someone else's.
It isn't just school Bible classes, it's every issue. Think abortion - you want it illegal in Ohio, have a say locally instead of competing with liberal media behemoths. Even California could have its way with the above amendment, allowing abortions up to age three, perhaps, and creating a commission and associated bureaucracy to make such determinations.
As things swings back conservative (see the 2009 gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey) and before the next inevitable conservative failure, shouldn't this amendment be the goal? If only we can get Sarah Palin to understand the merits, it just might be possible.
NOTE TO THE READER: The Legal-Ease column will be on hiatus until after the holidays. It will return in January.
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Posted: Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Article comment by:
C. Davidson
The proposal is essentially a reproduction of the tenth amendment, but actually narrows it with specific terminology. If the elitists already ignore the Constitution, why would they pay attention to a new amendment? There would be enormous time and money spent in trying to get this amendment passed, and for what? Our time and money would be better spent directly confronting the monetary elites themselves, with the move to audit (and eventually end) the Federal Reserve System and with the individual States asserting their 10th amendment rights, which have been so long ignored. The Constitution doesn't need to be amendmended, just obeyed!
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